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Enacting Musical Time
 OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N M U SIC T H E O RY
Series Editor
Steven Rings
Studies in Music with Text
David Lewin
Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music
Kofi Agawu
Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings,
1787-​1791
Danuta Mirka
Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied
Yonatan Malin
A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common
Practice
Dmitri Tymoczko
In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in
Early Nineteenth-​Century Music
Janet Schmalfeldt
Tonality and Transformation
Steven Rings
Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature
Richard Cohn
Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas
Seth Monahan
Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era
Roger Mathew Grant
Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music
Daniel Harrison
Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition
Jonathan De Souza
Foundations of Musical Grammar
Lawrence M. Zbikowski
Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form
Jason Yust
Flow: Expressive Rhythm in the Rapping Voice
Mitchell Ohriner
Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music
Mariusz Kozak
Enacting Musical Time
The Bodily Experience of New Music

M A R I U S Z KO Z A K

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–008020–4

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

 To Asia and Tim

Their love and enthusiasm inspire me always

 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
Lines 1
Music and Time 7
Enacting Musical Time 10

1. Meaning 16
Musical Objects 22
Objective Time 28
Lived Time 33
Significance 42
Affordances 45
2. Affordances 55
Breathing 57
Becoming Music (Behave So Strangely) 64
Musical Affordances 67
Situation Semantics 73
Cultural Information 77
Situation Semantics and Musical Affordances 85
Temporal Affordances 89
Musical Affordances of Breath 96
3. Body 104
Embodied Cognition 109
Temporal Bodies 112
Kinesthetic Knowledge 127
Kinesthetic Knowledge in Music Analysis 144
4. Flesh 148
The Body’s “I Can” 156
From “I Can” to Time 161
The Flesh of Time 169
Temporal Objects and the Flesh of Music 179
viii Contents

5. Affectivity 187
Auto-​Affection 188
Enacting Lived Time 193
Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd 205
Eternity in Augustine’s Confessions 214
Temporal and Affective Dynamics of Movement 218
Enacting Chronal Anxiety 223
6. Verticality 229
Vertical Time 238
Eternal Return 247
Affect 256
Hosokawa’s Vertical Time 262
Malleable Musical Form 269

Works Cited 277

Index 299
 Acknowledgments

In his 1676 letter to Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton wrote: “If I have seen
further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Foremost among my own
giants are two people who have been unsparing with their support and in-
spiring with their scholarship. One is Lawrence Zbikowski—​I continue to
rely on his advice even to this day, long after I’ve received my Ph.D. under
his supervision. His critical commentary and an eye for the big picture have
left a lasting mark on this book, while his encouragement helped me early
on to pursue unexpected avenues that ultimately proved to be central to my
argument. The other is Rolf Inge Godøy, my “second Doktorvater,” whose
gentle brilliance illuminates my own thinking. I owe them both my deepest
gratitude.
A monograph bears the name of a single author, but it is never a work com-
pleted in isolation. This maxim holds especially true for an interdisciplinary
book such as this, and over the years I have benefited from countless exchanges
with a long list of colleagues, collaborators, and discussants. Among the music
theorists and musicologists, I wish to thank Chelsea Burns, Eric Clarke, Arnie
Cox, Michael Figueroa, Tim Freeze, Luis-​Manuel Garcia, Daniel Gough,
Roger Grant, Marion Guck, Christopher Hasty, Erika Honisch, Bryn Hughes,
Sarah Iker, Brian Kane, Marianne Kielian-​ Gilbert, Trent Leipert, Justin
London, Megan Lovengood, Elizabeth Margulis, Peter Martens, José Oliveira
Martins, Greg McCandless, Eugene Montague, Maryam Moshaver, Marcelle
Pierson, Alexander Rehding, August Sheehy, Christopher Shultis, Peter Shultz,
Pete Smucker, James Steichen, Victoria Tzotzkova, Claudio Vellutini, Gregory
Weinstein, Lillian Wohl, and Mark Yeary. Megan Kaes Long has been an in-
genious accomplice in strategizing how to publish a music theory monograph.
Richard Hermann patiently read and generously shared his insights on early
drafts of this book. Jonathan De Souza’s expertise in all things Merleau-​Ponty
proved crucial in Chapter 3, while Robin James’s careful reading of Chapter 6
was key in helping me discover and shape my own philosophical voice. I am
also delighted to have had a formidable group of anonymous reviewers; thanks
to their penetrating critique and salutary advice this book is incomparably
better than it would have been.
x Acknowledgments

While music theory is my disciplinary home, a project as complex as this

one could not have taken off the ground without the stimulating discussions
with researchers from other fields. I am especially grateful to Ken Aizawa,
Anthony Chemero, Ian Cross, Sean Gallagher, Peter Keller, Jin Hyun Kim,
David Kirsh, Sebastian Klotz, Tomasz Komendziński, Mats Küssner, Jakub
Ryszard Matyja, Luc Nijs, Andrea Schiavio, Konrad Sierzputowski, Finn
Upham, and Frédérique de Vignemont. Parts of my research were generously
funded by the U.S.–​Norway Fulbright Foundation. Many thanks to the nu-
merous enthusiastic participants who had to dance to weird music, especially
Arthur Bass, Courtney Dern, Kelly McKowen, Rachel Severson, Rolf Steier,
Karl Unterschuetz, and Taylor White. I was able to do the bulk of my empir-
ical work at the University of Oslo, where I enjoyed seemingly inexhaust-
ible help and hospitality from Anne Danielsen, Mari Romarheim Haugen,
Alexander Refsum Jensenius, and other members of the Department of
Musicology and the fourMs lab. Kristian Nymoen in particular became an
inestimable collaborator and, most importantly, a kindhearted friend.
At Oxford University Press I have been fortunate to have had the support
of Steve Rings, the series editor, who shepherded this project with firm advo-
cacy and gentle counsel. In addition, this book would not have seen the light
of day if not for the unwavering support and guidance of Suzanne Ryan. She
saw its value when it was still in embryonic stages, and provided encourage-
ment through some of the most daunting stages of the publication process.
I also wish to thank the editorial staff and the production team. Josh Rutner
combed through the manuscript with the eyes of a hawk, picking out every
errant em-​dash while peppering his editorial remarks with endearingly ir-
reverent (though ultimately useful) asides. My graduate assistant, Marc
Hannaford, helped create most of the musical examples. Permissions to re-
produce the works of Louis Andriessen, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter,
Anna Clyne, Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa, Helmut Lachenmann,
Olga Neuwirth, and Andrew Norman have been generously provided by
Boosey & Hawkes, Peters Edition Limited, Breitkopf & Härtel, Schott Music,
and Ricordi. I also wish to express my appreciation to the Schoff Fund at
the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publica-
tion. The ideas presented have benefited from discussions in the University
Seminar on Studies in Dance.
Working and teaching at Columbia University meant having ready access
to some of the most curious, brilliant minds in North American academia.
 Acknowledgments xi

I am especially grateful to Jenny Boulboullé, Brian Boyd, Lynn Garafola,

Andrew Goldman, Nori Jacoby, Carmel Raz, and Pamela Smith. Their as-
tute comments provided me with many a fresh perspective. In the Music
Department at Columbia University I benefited immensely from the support
of my colleagues and students; while too many to mention by name, I hope
they all know that I continue to be inspired by each and every one of them.
George Lewis in particular has been a tremendous resource for helping
me link the humanistic and scientific sides of my project. To my fellow
theorists—​Joseph Dubiel and Ellie Hisama—​I owe special thanks for serving
as exemplars of scholarly rigor and professional integrity, and for challenging
and encouraging me along the way. I am also indebted to the chairs of the
Music Department during the time of writing this book—​Giuseppe Gerbino,
Susan Boynton, and Ana María Ochoa—​for creating an environment in
which I was able to thrive as a junior scholar. My most heartfelt thanks goes
to Benjamin Steege, Alessandra Ciucci, Kevin Fellezs, and Zosha Di Castri,
whose advice, moral backing, and loyalty have sustained me for the last six
years. They continue to be my role models, comrades, sounding boards, and
de facto mentors.
My family gave me the boost in confidence needed to complete this book,
and created an emotionally supportive environment in which to do it. Julia
Doe has been my sidekick and confidant in things professional and private.
Martha Sprigge, Mary Caldwell, and Daniel Steinberg have shared with me
wisdom that has helped me find a path through life, while their unfaltering
reassurance has kept me on course. My parents, Wies and Anna—​academics
both—​taught me to ask difficult questions and reach beyond the most ob-
vious answers, all the while serving as emblems of intellectual and personal
honesty. My brother, Pawel, proved to be an invaluable interlocutor as he
fielded my questions with exceptional insight and inimitable wit. For that,
and so much more, I am forever indebted to them.
Finally, this book could have only emerged from the emotional bedrock
formed lovingly and patiently by my wife, Joanna, and our son, Timothy.
Their unmitigated affection and abiding trust helped me to see both the value
of my work and the necessity of balancing it with familial activities. With my
eternal gratitude, what follows is dedicated to them.
 Introduction

Lines
Imagine Time
Perhaps it is a line that stretches horizontally in front of you, with the past
all gathered up to your left, the future to your right, and the place where
you stand marking the present. Perhaps the line stretches front to back,
with the past behind you and the future in front. Or perhaps the other way
around, as it is for the Aymara people from the Andes (Nuñez and Sweetser
2006). Maybe the line is actually a river, and from the riverbank you can
view time and the events happening within it, with the future upstream and
the past downstream—​or perhaps you yourself are being carried along by
its current.
Imagining time itself—​rather than events that occur in time—​is not easy.
To borrow a musical term, time’s nature fulfills a double emploi, as both an ab-
stract concept and a sensed presence of our lives. This duality seems irrecon-
cilable, as attested by centuries of debates involving philosophers, scientists,
and artists, among others. We come to terms with it by drawing on our bodily
experience to create useful metaphors, but these metaphors are often incon-
sistent or incoherent (Cox 2017). Consider time as a river: if you are caught
up in its flow—​that is, if you are in time—​then the past is upstream. But if
you survey the river from its bank, the past is downstream. Now, examine
the metaphor itself. If time is a river, what is it contained in? What constitutes
the riverbed? And, if you are caught up in its flow, what serves as your point
of reference such that you know that it does, indeed, flow? Furthermore, if
you stand as an observer on the riverbank, where are you? Are you outside of
time? Is that even possible?
Still, even when faced with inconsistency and incoherence, we try to
imagine time in its multiplicity of forms, expressing its function—​more
so, perhaps, than its nature—​as an immaterial force that helps us to order
and organize the incessant change we encounter in the world. Time gives
change both a dimensionality (the past, the present, and the future) and a

Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music. Mariusz Kozak, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190080204.001.0001
2 Enacting Musical Time

direction (the present—​containing elements from the past—​opens up onto

the future). The line is a ubiquitous companion in our imaginings because,
as David Rosenberg (2010) shows in his beautifully illustrated history of
the timeline, its flexibility offers a broad assortment of configurations, in-
cluding arrows, loops, spirals, sinusoids, and other shapes able to satisfy the
needs of those who, for whatever reason, find themselves trying to imagine
time. Although a relatively recent construct in Western history, the timeline
holds much sway in our contemporary thinking, along with other temporal
representations, such as clocks, calendars, tables, and circles. Taken together,
they form a repository of Western temporal knowledge and a resource for
our current and future models.
Delving into the history of this knowledge would already take us too far
afield, even if we limited ourselves to Western thought, and even if we fur-
ther excluded painters, writers, composers, and all other sorts of artists and
artisans—​to say nothing of physicists, economists, engineers, theologians,
and so on—​whose work explicitly considers time and our experience of it.1
What is clear is that time is one of the foremost concerns for human beings,
even if thinking about it leads to disagreements about the most basic is-
sues: Does time flow, or is that merely an artifact of our minds? If it does flow,
does it do so in only one direction, or in several at once? Is time real, or an
illusion? Is it autonomous and objective, or contingent and subjective? Do we
move through time, or does time move while we remain stationary? Can we
travel through time?
For all the disagreement, understanding the nature of time is especially
urgent for anyone interested in the analysis and interpretation of music,
which is often—​and often without resistance—​said to be an eminently tem-
poral artform. And the urgency is only amplified when we consider the most
recent Western classical art music. Throughout the twentieth century and
into the twenty-​first, time has become one of the most dominant concerns
for modernist and postmodernist composers, prompted by such a diverse
range of influences as new digital technologies, developments in the physical
and natural sciences, cultural theories that focus on the human subject as
an agent constituting his or her own existence, and non-​Western ideas and

1 The exercise, in any case, is redundant, because there already exists a substantial body of literature

that addresses this history in detail. Some of it offers a sweeping view of the most influential thinkers
on the subject of time, from Plato and Aristotle, through Augustine, Newton, and Einstein, and on
to Husserl and Hawking (Bardon 2013; Holford-​Strevens 2005). Others focus on a specific figure
(Coope 2005; Canales 2015), historical period (Thomas 2018; McGinnis 2013), or school of thought
(Hoy 2009; Muldoon 2006).
 Introduction 3

concepts that have filtered into European and North American intellectual
landscapes (Crispin 2009; Campbell 2013; Lochhead 2002). Some composers
have written extensively about their approaches to time, leaving us with ex-
plicit ideas that often serve as springboards for analyses of their music. These
composers include, among others, Igor Stravinsky (1947) and Karlheinz
Stockhausen (1958, 1959), both of whom distinguished between the objec-
tive time of music and the subjective experience of the listener; Elliott Carter
(1977), who conceived of time as a screen onto which our lives are projected;
Pierre Boulez (1971), who drew on the music of Bali and India to conceptu-
alize smooth and striated time; and Gérard Grisey (1987), for whom musical
time was constituted by three layers—​the bones, flesh, and the skin of time.2
As composers continue to use the sonic medium to question established
orthodoxies and to create new paths through time, it seems that lines no
longer provide enough multiformity to account for the rich experiential do-
main of the listener. Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that time as such has no
perceivable appearance apart from the events that “take time,” because it
grants our imagination the freedom to consider other forms that might aid
us in processing the unfolding of events around us.
Imagine time differently, then—​ as a sphere, or a cube, or even a
hexacosichoron. Imagine it running diagonally, or folding back upon itself,
or sideways, or from the inside out. Imagine time crackling, wheezing, rus-
tling, swooshing, buzzing. Imagine time as silent. Now imagine it smelling
of freshly cut grass, or a musty hotel lobby. Then again, what if time glistened
and shimmered? What if it breathed, slowly, in-​out-​in-​out-​in-​out? What if it
came near you, so close that you could feel its warmth, embrace it, hold it in
your hands? What if it did all of that at once?
These might seem like whimsical metaphors, evocative poetic images that
do little to augment our understanding of time itself. But in what follows
I argue that these are all expressions of the same temporalizing act of the
body engaged with its environment. Rather than replacing old metaphors
with new ones, each chapter in this book questions notions of time enshrined
in our theoretical concepts, and, by delving into the pre-​discursive space in
which the listening experience touches the sonic world, offers in their place
new ways of thinking of time’s significance in our encounters with music.
What interests me in particular is how and why time shows up as an aspect of

2 For extensive commentary on the genesis of Carter’s thought, see Bernard (1995). Campbell

(2013) discusses these and other composers’ approaches to time from a Deleuzian perspective.
4 Enacting Musical Time

our listening experience, and how music draws on this experience to create
opportunities for the emergence of new meanings.
The possibility of time smelling, or shimmering, or drawing nearer to us
seems to run counter to the prevailing view, which is that odor, luminosity,
and movement are some of the myriad properties of physical objects. While
these physical objects undergo a change in time, time itself remains a sepa-
rate (odorless, invisible, immobile) dimension. As Lewis Rowell pointed out
in his 1996 review of music articles that had been published under the aus-
pices of the International Society for the Study of Time (by now in need of
updating, but by no means outdated), music-​theoretical writings also adhere
to the prevailing view. According to Rowell (1996b), time is usually regarded
as “a quantitative dimension articulated by audible events,” with focus pri-
marily directed toward such aspects as rhythm and meter (69). Like the line
metaphor above, this approach draws on spatial analogues of time as the
basis for measuring how musical events unfold. The main objective is to un-
derstand the relationships between sounds as if the piece of music were a
temporally extended object that, although not available for perception be-
yond the sliver of the present, nevertheless “exists” spread out in its entirety
along the timeline. It makes no difference whether the line runs horizontally
or vertically, left-​to-​right or back-​to-​front, as long as it represents a time fun-
damentally characterized by quantity. This quantity can be expressed as the
time-​interval between successive events (inter-​onset interval, or IOI), or as
proportional relationships between durations, or as locations within a con-
tainer (e.g., a measure) that keeps repeating at a consistent rate.3
By contrast, in this book I focus on a concept of musical time similar to
what Rowell describes as “ideas and experiences, with distinct properties
that can be modeled with sound” (Rowell 1996b, 69). My approach is based
largely on twentieth-​century continental philosophy, especially the work
of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, who suggested
that time, while real, exists neither objectively nor autonomously. Taking
up this perspective, I consider time as the form of the listener’s interaction
with music. Building on evidence from such diverse fields as music theory,
phenomenology, cognitive science, and social anthropology, I develop a
philosophical and critical argument that musical time is constituted by the

3 There are numerous examples of these approaches in music-​theoretical literature. Some of the

most influential ones include London (2012), Cohn (1992), and Schachter (1999; see especially
“Rhythm and Linear Analysis” and “Aspects of Meter”). Most recently, Yust (2018) emphasizes the
spatial representation of time by explicitly connecting musical temporality with a landscape.
 Introduction 5

moving bodies of participants engaged in musical activities. I put forward

and illustrate a claim that musical time describes the form of a specific kind
of interaction between musical sounds and a situated, embodied listener. My
main thesis is that this musical time emerges when the listener enacts his or
her implicit kinesthetic knowledge about “how music goes.” Such knowledge
is expressed in the entire spectrum of behavior, from deliberate inactivity,
through the simple action of tapping one’s foot in synchrony with the beat, to
dancing in a way that engages the whole body. I explore this idea in the con-
text of recent Western classical art music, where composers create temporal
experiences that might feel unfamiliar or idiosyncratic, experiences that blur
the line between spectatorship and participation, and even experiences that
challenge conventional notions of musical form.
To be sure, the way in which I regard time is novel in the field of music
theory, and its emergence from skillful behavior in response to the auditory
signal requires some explaining. By way of a non-​musical example, consider
your first encounter with a bottle of perfume that is new to you. As you press
on the plunger, aerosolized droplets rush out and form a cloud that hangs in
the air in front of you. In order to catch a whiff, you move your head, maybe
even your whole body, this way and that. You create a fan-​like motion with
your hands in order to direct the fragrant air toward your nose. Move too
much to the side, and the smell disappears; linger too close to the center of
the cloud, and it becomes overwhelming, suffocating. There is a reciprocity
in this action between bodily movements and the olfactory sensation, each
one guiding and responding to the other. The structure of the event emerges
from the interaction.
Skeptics will argue that it is possible to construe this interaction as some-
thing unfolding in time, with reference to an external, independent time-
keeper. We might talk, for example, about the velocity with which droplets
disperse through the air, or the speed with which electrical impulses travel
from the olfactory bulb to the amygdala in the brain. These are all valid ways
of describing the situation, but they separate the mechanics of the interac-
tion from its significance, which is to discover the odorous properties of the
perfume. Important to this discovery is the way the reciprocal relationship
between the aerosolized droplets and the human subject gives both spatial
and temporal structure to this encounter. This structure is not given prior
to the event’s unfolding, but instead emerges during the bodily engagement
with entities in the environment. Thus, in the above scenario, the ordering
of the event—​the precise manner in which it unfolds—​is driven by the
6 Enacting Musical Time

unique dynamics between the chemical compounds that make up the per-
fume droplets and the situated, embodied subject who experiences them as
a particular kind of smell, with a particular concentration and a particular
quality. These unique dynamics imbue the entire interaction with a special
significance, and it is this significance that constitutes time. As Merleau-​
Ponty (1968) argued, time is precisely the form of the unique dynamics be-
tween entities in the world; it is a relation—​or what he called “a network of
intentionalities”—​distributed among all humans as well as the things and
creatures around them.
Central to the distributed network of intentionalities is a body actively en-
gaged with the world. This world includes various auditory signals, some of
which form patterns that enculturated listeners recognize as music. Work on
the relationship between listeners’ bodily movements and common-​practice
musical techniques, such as the metrical organization of tonal harmonic
patterns, is already well into its heyday, both in terms of gathering empir-
ical evidence, and the development of theoretical models.4 Research in this
regard is thriving, spurred by the ever-​advancing technological innovations
in the field of human motion-​capture and analysis. By contrast, the picture
of the body’s function in contemporary music is still coming into focus.
Scholars like Arnie Cox (2017), Lawrence Zbikowski (2016), Andrew Mead
(1999), and Judy Lochhead (2015) have been making considerable inroads,
but I would not be surprised if, apart from the context of “modern dance,”
many readers found it inconceivable that one’s body could be explicitly in-
volved while listening to new music. I say this having run numerous studies
in which I asked participants to do just that: to move in response to pieces
that hardly used any recognizable “musical” materials, to say nothing of such
familiar constructs as meter or even a beat. For some, the task was incom-
prehensible, even offensive. But for the vast majority it turned out to be an
exhilarating, eye-​(and ear!)-​opening encounter, which ultimately convinced
them that new music need not be “difficult,” that it need not be an intensely
cerebral experience marked by immobile concentration and requiring an al-
most mathematical understanding of how the sounds relate to one another.
In other words, that new music could move them.

4 Several collections of essays have appeared in the last decade that address theoretical and empir-

ical aspects of musical embodiment, including Godøy and Leman (2010), Gritten and King (2006,
2011), and Leman et al. (2017).
 Introduction 7

This book is partly an elaboration of these encounters and their applica-

tion to questions of musical time and meaning. One of my goals is to open
up productive avenues for interpreting contemporary works that bring to
listeners’ attention various problems associated with the experience of time.
To that end, the central focus is on the listeners’ bodies, their capabilities, and
the emergence of a particular kind of meaning—​which I call significance—​in
contemporary music.5 Significance is a pragmatic meaning that is immanent
in the interaction between music and listener. Basing my discussion on the
above-​mentioned embodied phenomenology of Merleau-​Ponty, and on the
ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, I show that the body enacts time by actu-
alizing the potential inherent in a given situation. Motivating this body is the
basic interest in, and engagement with, the sonic environment. As such, this
is not a book that merely connects time with music, but one that reexamines
the tools of music analysis through the lens of what phenomenologists call
“lived time,” or time as it shows up in human lives (Hoy 2009). My intent is to
challenge conventional ways of thinking about musical time and its related
concepts of rhythm, meter, tempo, and form, with the hope that this chal-
lenge expands our conception of musical time in a way that harmonizes with
the rich depth of our experiences.

Music and Time

Following Susanne Langer, and especially later extensions of her ideas in

Zbikowski’s Foundations of Musical Grammar (2017), I endorse the notion
that music’s significance lies in the way it uses successions of sounds to reflect
the temporal bodily patterns that a given culture finds important enough to
store for later retrieval. One consequence of this function of music is that
our bodies produce a kind of knowledge that lies close to the way in which
time is constituted. In turn, those same bodies influence how we understand
musical meaning. This way of thinking about musical time engages with is-
sues of musical functions in various human cultures. As such, it differs from
how time is usually considered in music theory, where it typically shows up

5 There is a lot more focus on the performers’ bodies in relation to musical meaning. The list is

long, but some of the most influential contributions include Sudnow (1978), Cusick (1994), Mead
(1999), Fisher and Lochhead (2002), and Montague (2012). Most recently De Souza (2017) devotes
a chapter to listeners, even though the bulk of his book addresses performers. Moreover, Cox (2017)
attempts to bridge the split between the body’s role in performance and in listening.
8 Enacting Musical Time

in concrete terms as part of analyses of rhythm and meter.6 Although such

studies ostensibly deal with time, few challenge its ontological status, treating
it as a foregone conclusion.7 One could hardly assail, for example, the confi-
dence in Robert Morgan’s assertion that “there is no question, of course, that
music is a temporal art” (1980, 527; emphasis added). But what if the author’s
claim were not as indubitable as it seems? What if music’s relationship to time
were a question? In what way is music a temporal art?
In the writings of the theorists who have grappled with issues of ontology,
there is a proliferation of different kinds of time, each one signaling a concern
with different aspects of musical unfolding. To list a few examples, Jonathan
Kramer (1988) draws a distinction between “linear” and “non-​linear” time,
both of which describe different logical relationships between sonic events;
Barbara Barry (1990) theorizes “structured” and “transcendent” time, the
former referring to motion and the latter to space; David Epstein (1995)
posits “chronometric” and “integral” time, which he identifies with meter and
rhythm, respectively; Byron Almén and Robert Hatten (2012) distinguish be-
tween “suspended,” “cyclical,” “symmetrical or mirrored,” and other kinds of
time, all having to do with aspects of narrative in twentieth-​century music.8
In contrast to these, Christopher Hasty’s Meter as Rhythm (1997) erases all
dichotomies and presents an argument that musical meter is a form of mu-
sical rhythm.9 Asking us to “take time seriously,” his Whitehead-​inspired

6 Rhythm concerns information contained in the acoustical signal itself: it is the distribution of

auditory pressure waves. Meter, by contrast, is the way in which rhythm is organized into regularly
recurring, hierarchically organized groups (London 2001). There is some disagreement regarding
whether meter is an objective musical property (Poudier 2008), or whether it is the listeners’ cogni-
tive ability (Keller and Burnham 2005), or whether it depends equally on both (London 2012), but
general consensus is that there is a categorical difference between things happening at the musical
“surface” and their “deeper” organization (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983).
7 Some recent examples of studies of rhythm and meter in music theory include Yeston (1974),

Lester (1986), Mirka (2009), Malin (2010), Murphy (2009), and Smith (2006). Both have also been
studied extensively from a cognitive perspective: see in particular Longuet-​Higgins and Lee (1982),
Riess Jones (1987), Clarke and Krumhansl (1990), Gjerdingen (1989), and Grahn and Brett (2007).
For a thorough review of this literature, see DeGraf (2018).
8 Two more monographs are worth mentioning in this context: Arnie Cox’s Music and Embodied

Cognition (2017) (which, although not concerned with time per se, does address the bodily source of
our metaphors of time, as well as how our bodies participate in the construction of musical meaning),
and Justin London’s Hearing in Time (2012) (which does not explicitly tackle the ontology of time it-
self, but does incorporate spatial concepts of time into a theory of meter).
9 Krebs (1999) also eschews dichotomies in his theory of meter. To him, meter is “the union of all

layers of motion (i.e., series of regularly recurring pulses)” active within a piece of music. He iden-
tifies three such layers: the pulse layer, which is “the most quickly moving pervasive series of pulses,
generally arising from more or less constant series of attacks on the musical surface”; even more
quickly moving are “micropulses,” which are “coloristic embellishments” of meter; and the “interpre-
tive” layer, which is the slowest moving series of regular pulses that is perceptible, and which “allow
the listener to ‘interpret’ the raw data of the pulse layer by organizing its pulses into larger units” (23).
 Introduction 9

philosophical approach gives us good reason to think that the distinction

between meter and rhythm is merely a matter of nomenclature. Instead of
thinking of them as opposing kinds of time, Hasty suggests that meter, like
rhythm, results from a listener’s active engagement in making sense of the
object of experience—​in this case, music. An interesting fallout of this shift
in perspective is that even music without an explicit metrical structure can
be heard as a succession of upbeats and downbeats, which he illustrates with
analyses of such twentieth-​century works as Anton Webern’s Quartet Op. 22
(1930) and Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteau sans maître (1954).
Hasty’s assertion that process is a fundamental feature of musical
time, his ultimate focus on music outside of the common-​practice tra-
dition, and especially his entreaty to “take time seriously,” all resonate
across the pages of this volume. However, there is an author—​likely little
known to music theorists—​who has influenced my own thinking to an
even greater extent. David Burrows’s Time and the Warm Body (2007)
presents an entirely original philosophy of time based on a binary oppo-
sition between two impulses that permeate the universe: going and stabi-
lizing. According to Burrows, the oscillation between these two states is
a necessary condition of the survival of any dynamical system, whether
at subatomic or supra-​galactic levels. Music in this schema is “our most
dedicated and fine-​grained isolation and cultivation of time and its issues
in an art form” (65). With its focus on the generative now, music uses the
flow of sounding events to serve as a representation of the most essential
features of time, which are the driving impulses of movement and sta-
bility. As a microcosm of life-​sustaining processes, music for Burrows is a
model of temporality.
Hasty and Burrows form the backdrop for the discussion that ensues in the
following chapters. The former makes a case that our theoretical reflections
on the temporal dimension of music should more closely harmonize with
our listening experience. The latter argues that the “now” is central to the
constitution of our time, and that music—​which, if it could be said to exist,
only does so in the “now”—​is really efficient at revealing the most significant
attributes of time. My own contribution integrates these two perspectives by
considering the position of an embodied, situated, flesh-​and-​blood listener
who enacts the temporal patterns of music. What are the temporalities evi-
dent in our interactions with musical sounds? What bodily skills and capac-
ities make these interactions possible? And, most importantly, what are the
implications of these interactions for musical understanding?
10 Enacting Musical Time

Enacting Musical Time

By engaging with these questions, my aim is to explore a level of musical

understanding that I consider to be fundamental to the listening experi-
ence. In the process, I expose some of the assumptions that underlie music-​
theoretical endeavors and reassess certain concepts that have long become
ossified in our analytical methods. I do this in an effort to use the physicality
of a situated listener as a lens through which the connection between music
and time can be imagined anew. To that end, the book’s overarching argu-
ment begins with the problem of meaning. I propose that an active, bodily
engagement with musical sounds offers a window into a pre-​linguistic, non-​
representational significance, which discloses music as a temporal object by
retaining the dynamical nature of time. Significance is captured by Gibson’s
theory of affordances, but since music—​in addition to being part of the sonic
environment—​has aesthetic value, we need to amend the theory to include
temporal objects that offer the listener what I call “temporal affordances.”
These affordances specify when an action needs to take place, and they
emerge in listeners’ embodied interactions with musical sounds. Such mu-
sical interactions, which constitute each listener’s enacted knowledge of
musical processes, are socially and culturally conditioned from birth, begin-
ning with the earliest communion between an infant and a caregiver, and
are driven by another set of constraints in the form of “social affordances”
available to each well-​adapted listener. By observing musical interactions, we
gain insight into the emergence of a level of musical understanding that is
inextricably bound up with the passage of time, and in which such passage is
manifested. Based on this understanding, my approach implicates both the
listening body and the musical temporal object as the co-​creators of time.
The time that is thus created is not the objective, spatial time that was so
famously and publicly denounced by Henri Bergson.10 Rather, it is lived
time—​time characterized by a quality that both shapes and is shaped by the
dynamics of our interactions with the environment. Merleau-​Ponty (2012)
argued that it is a time of a single experience of a continually changing pre-
sent, in which what was once implicit becomes explicit, while what was

10 Bergson makes no explicit appearance in my discussion, but his ideas resonate throughout

the writings of most philosophers of time in the twentieth century. On the famous debate between
Bergson and Einstein concerning the nature of time, see Canales (2015). Bergson’s most significant
critiques of spatial, “scientific” time can be found in his Matière et mémoire (1896) and Essai sur les
donneés immédiates de la conscience (1889).
 Introduction 11

explicit becomes implicit. I add to this that lived time is enacted. Enaction
concerns the view that our minds are not bound by the skull, with the brain
forming representations of the external world based on information that is
passed on by the perceptual system, but rather that it originates in and is con-
stituted by perceptually guided action (Schiavio et al. 2017). In other words,
it is an activity described by the interactions between an organism and its
environment. Meaning is something that the organism brings forth within
a system that encompasses its neurology, physiology, and the environment
in which it is embedded. In particular, enactivism—​the intellectual tradi-
tion that draws on enaction—​focuses on subjective experience in order to
consider the role of emotion, affect, and motivation in constituting human
cognition (Thompson 2008). According to this view, perception is not a pas-
sive effect of an external stimulus, but rather a mutual interaction emerging
from skillful bodily activity: as the world solicits certain actions by virtue
of the organism’s openness to its own milieu, the organism reconfigures the
environment by virtue of those solicited actions. The key here is the fact that
the organism is motivated to act on the world, to care about its own survival
such that the world shows up as a “correlate of [its] needs and concerns”
(Colombetti 2013, 2).
Time in this context is the structure, or meaning, or the significance of the
interaction. It emerges from the affordance-​driven dynamical system that
forms between skillfully acting, affectively motivated agents and an environ-
ment to which they are well adapted. We can summarize the main points of
time-​as-​enaction using the following principles:

-​ Time is an emergent property of one’s active, dynamic, affectively

charged engagement with the environment; it is the form that emerges
from this engagement.
-​ Time is a kind of performance in the sense of having a dual character of
being culturally sanctioned but also open to individual variation based
on the agent’s affective disposition.
-​ Time is actively generated by a living, animate being. An autono-
mous organism creates its own conditions of existence in a process of
“auto-​affection.”
-​ Enacted time emerges from the exercise of skillful know-​how in situ-
ated, bodily action. The environment and the skilled agent together
create a dynamical system.
12 Enacting Musical Time

-​ Enacted time exists as the relation between the cognitive agent and the
environment. It is not the sole property of either one, and it alters as the
relationship changes.
-​ Enacted time is not perceived; rather, it is experienced. The body of the
agent is central to its emergence.

I elaborate these principles by weaving them into the narrative arc of the
book, which progresses from the surface of time to its depth, with each
chapter serving as a step along this descent. The upshot is that moments in
time are characterized by two seemingly mutually exclusive features. On the
one hand, they each have a depth that interconnects them through our sense
of the past and of the future. Importantly, this interconnection does not di-
rectly implicate memory and anticipation, because those already presuppose
a sense of past and future: memory and anticipation are present experiences,
whereas a sense of the past and future is a sense of something precisely not
present. On the other hand, each moment has a distinct feel, or grain, which
makes it unique and wholly different from all other moments. There is an af-
fective dichotomy insofar as any given present is at once familiar (because it
is something of our creation, where it integrates with other moments of our
being) and also strange and foreign (because it happens only that one time,
and it can never be recovered). Time is therefore both coherent and inco-
herent, and we use the concept of time as a tool to both create familiarity and
to provide support for the unfamiliar.
In what follows I engage in analyses of examples from contemporary
Western art music in which composers, by foregrounding time as a point
of concern, offer opportunities to experience the tension between what is
familiar and what is not. This effect can be achieved through a number of
techniques, including stretching the interval between sonic events beyond
the limits of listeners’ working memories, eschewing regularities of pulse
and metrical organization, creating musical forms that challenge notions of
a linear and uniformly moving time, or using sounds that more readily re-
semble noise. In all of these situations, as well as others in which something
out of the ordinary is happening in the music, time acquires the potential to
surge out of its neutral state as the background of our lives and become an ob-
ject of listeners’ attention. A fluctuation, a slippage, a momentary wobble or
vibration in temporality knocks it out of balance and perturbs it just enough
for the listener to take notice. I draw on the resources provided by the lis-
tening body to identify and analyze these perturbations, in turn illustrating
 Introduction 13

how composers aesthetically extend the temporality of everyday life and im-
pugn our common-​sense notions of time.
Chapter 1, “Meaning,” develops two claims that are central to the book’s
overall argument. The first is that certain temporal musical objects exist only
as ephemera—​always remaining outside of symbolic representation. These
objects are constituted by lived time. The second claim is that the ephemeral
meaning of music consists of its significance, which I define as a practical
meaning that arises in the moment of one’s perception of, and action upon,
one’s immediate environment. Significance is a process that is enacted in the
dyadic relationships between environmental affordances—​opportunities for
and constraints of action—​and a situated agent.
In Chapter 2, “Affordances,” I elaborate on the idea that significance is
manifested in music’s affordances relative to listeners’ bodily capabilities.
I argue that music is a significant phenomenon because it furnishes listeners
with two kinds of affordances: “social affordances,” and what I call “tem-
poral affordances.” These latter affordances specify when an action can be
performed, and thus differ from their spatial counterparts, which specify
the kinds of actions one can perform. Social and temporal affordances can
interact, but current theories of musical affordances are incomplete insofar
as they treat music as an environmental sound while deferring its aesthetic
value to “higher” cognitive processes. In contrast to these theories, I argue
that the process of aestheticization begins precisely when music temporalizes
the world for its listeners—​that is, when time becomes a point of concern.
Affordance systems are constituted by two elements: the physical world,
and the bodies of perceiving organisms. Whereas in Chapter 2 I focused on
the former, in Chapter 3 (“Body”) I take a closer look at listeners’ bodily capa-
bilities. I first draw on my own and others’ observational studies to show how
listeners’ capacities for movement to music unfold in two distinct ways: (1)
by synchronizing with a pulse, and (2) by coordinating their movements
with events separated by longer, or uneven, spans of time. I then argue that
these two categories of movement constitute a kinesthetic knowledge of
music’s temporal processes—​of “how music goes.” I develop a comprehen-
sive account of this knowledge as a contextual enactment, through bodily en-
gagement with the world, of the dynamics, affectivity, and intercorporeality
of our involvement with the world—​as a dynamic feel of living as an animate
and environmentally embedded being engaged in some task.
Chapter 4, “Flesh,” connects the notion of affordances with phenomeno-
logical investigation to explore how the human body, with its perceptual and
14 Enacting Musical Time

animate capabilities, co-​creates time together with the sonic environment.

I employ Merleau-​Ponty’s concept of flesh as an inextricable link between
a subjective body and the objective world, and consider how time may be
viewed as one of the forms that this link can take. Highlighting the similar-
ities between affordances and flesh—​arguing that the former describe the
interaction between bodily and environmental capacities, while the latter
discloses the structure of the system as a whole—​I return to my earlier pro-
posal that music, as a social and temporal affordance, allows us to consider
the listener-​music interaction as the very source of time. Time here is enacted
when, engaged in this interaction, the body slips back ​and f​ orth between its
appearance as a physical object submerged in the world and its function as
the seat of subjectivity.
Chapters 5 and 6 are intended to more fully demonstrate the analytic ca-
pacity of the enactive approach developed earlier in the book. In Chapter 5,
“Affectivity,” I draw once again on Merleau-​Ponty, as well as recent additions
to his work by the neuroscientist Francisco Varela (Verela and Depraz 2005;
Varela et al. 1992) and the cultural theorist Mark Hansen (2004a, 2004b),
in order to explore how listeners’ fundamental capacity to both affect and
be affected by musical sounds generates lived musical time. I illustrate the
consequences of this process with an analysis of time and eternity in Louis
Andriessen’s monumental work De Tijd (1979–​81). In contrast to this focus
on “micro-​listening,” or an approach that attends to minute sonic fluctuations,
in Chapter 6 I look at the enactment of time over the course of an entire
piece. This final chapter, titled “Verticality,” presents an analysis of Toshio
Hosokawa’s Vertical Time Study I (1992) as a vehicle for examining how the
body participates in creating structure in Western contemporary music.

***

My goal in this volume is to open up the music-​theoretical dialogue to

new ways of thinking about the role of the body in constructing musical
meanings, and to explore the consequences of this thinking as it relates to
our understanding of the relationship between music and time. That said,
this is not explicitly a study of rhythm and meter. In fact, most of the mu-
sical examples I analyze forestall a sense of metrical organization, and one in
particular—​Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd (see Chapter 5)—​can hardly be said
to employ rhythm (in the conventional sense) at all. Neither am I interested
in cataloguing the specific techniques that contemporary composers use to
 Introduction 15

undermine or otherwise highlight various temporal forms. Studies that en-

gage in such analyses typically draw on objective notions of time in order to
address the emergence of musical meaning as a response to normative tem-
poral experiences. The method usually assumes a stable ontology of time
that is “encoded”—​as Robert Hatten (2006) describes it—​in specific kinds
of musical events, and proceeds by showing how a composer is able to dis-
close or engender alternative temporal experiences by deviating from those
encodings. Although I too am concerned with how contemporary music
offers opportunities for new temporal experiences, I cautiously avoid refer-
ring to objective time as a standard for comparison. Furthermore, this book
is not meant to present an overview of the myriad ways in which contem-
porary composers themselves think about time and how their concepts are
implemented in the sounding material. If anything, I tend to push against the
composers’ own words in order to expose and amplify the gaps and cracks
between the different philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic traditions that
comprise their milieu.
Finally, the scope of the discussion is limited to recent Western classical
art music, and I make no explicit claims about the more general applicability
of the theoretical or analytical perspective I develop. A more comprehen-
sive project would not only require a synthesis of the vast literature on time
and embodiment—​perhaps in the form of an original ontology of musical
time—​and an expansion of repertoire beyond the classical idiom, it would
also have to incorporate concepts and musical practices from non-​Western
cultures. From a pragmatic perspective, this would inflate the present book
beyond all limits of manageability. For the same reason, I do not present em-
pirical data as evidence of human embodied–​cognitive capacities, but in-
stead use these data as the ground from which I embark upon an analysis
of musical practices themselves. Put differently: whereas scientific work on
musical embodiment focuses on answering questions about how people hear
and comprehend music, here I reflect listening capabilities back onto the
musical object in order to ask: “What does how you hear tell me about what
you hear?”
 1
Meaning

“Susanna” is the third movement of Andrew Norman’s string trio titled The
Companion Guide to Rome (2010).1 This particular movement is a miniature
for solo viola, and you can see it in its entirety in Example 1.1. One analytical
observation that can be made right away is that it has a very sparse and rudi-
mental pitch structure, containing recognizable elements from common-​
practice tonality (such as chains of 4–​3 suspensions and open fifths) without
actually operating within a tonal system. It is somewhat reminiscent of J. S.
Bach’s work’s for solo stringed instruments, but Norman does not use any
identifiable quotations. In fact, whatever tonal techniques he does employ
seem to be mere stock figures that could have come from just about any-
where, used more for their capacity to stand in as markers of archaism than
for their motivic potential.
The whole-​tone descent in the lowest voice supporting the aforemen-
tioned suspensions, and the unusual resolutions of the tritone—​at the end of
the first system (E–​A♯ → E–​B) and later in the middle of the second system
(A♭–​D → A♭–​E♭)—​together provide a way into the pitch and harmonic struc-
ture of the piece. However, an analysis that focused on only these elements
would tell but a small part of the story, and would need to be supplemented
by an account of how the piece’s meaning is partly constituted by the
performer’s body.2 The violist is instructed to apply heavy pressure to the bow
while initially shaking it and, later, moving it very slowly, producing sounds
that barely escape the instrument. From an almost inaudible G♯–​B dyad in
the opening, to the full-​throated broken chords in the third line of the score,
there is a gradual opening of sound, an increase in clarity that corresponds
with the upsurge of dynamics. A dominant-​like C–​B suspension against an

1 A recording with the score is available on YouTube at https://​www.youtube.com/​

watch?v=40ZPDb_​tMDU (the relevant movement starts at 2:40).

2 A great deal has been written about musical meaning in just the past few decades—​so much so

that it seems almost easier to list sources that are not concerned with this issue. What follows is but a
small collection of more recent writings: essays in Almén and Pearsall (2006) and Robinson (1997),
Kivy (1990), Davies (1994), Scruton (1997), Clifton (1983), Agawu (1991), Hatten (1994), Cook
(1998, 2001), Monelle (2000), Nattiez (1990), L. Kramer (2002), Small (1998), and Clarke (2005).

Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music. Mariusz Kozak, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190080204.001.0001
Another random document with
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getroue besoeker van die klub in die stad geword. Hy het begin
dobbel en het gewen. Terwyl sy vroutjie langsaam herstellende was,
na haar bevalling, het hy onterende en berugte omgang aangeknoop
met ander vrouens. Alida het eendag die lae verraad agtergekom.
Haar regskapenheid het ná haar huwelik dieselfde gebly. Sy het eers
geleer dat daar soiets as ontrou was deur die wrede ondervinding
van ontrou self. Sy het daarteen opgekom. Maar in plaas van die
skuldbekentenis en berou wat sy verwag het, en wat haar
vergewensgesind sou gemaak het, moes sy die volgende
vernederende woorde hoor:
—Jy wou gehad het dat ek moet bedank—wel, ek het bedank.
Gee net jouself die skuld as ek probeer om, op my manier, afleiding
te soek ná die verlies van my betrekking. ’n Man moet iets te doen
hê. Ek het my lewensdoel vir jou opgeoffer. Wat het jy my daarvoor
gegee?
Die verwyte het haar laat verstom. Sy het haar toe apart gehou en
opgesluit in stille smart; hoewel ongetroos, kom die houding ooreen
met haar onderdanige natuur.
Verlies by die dobbelspel het verbitterend gewerk op Marthenay.
Hy het toe begin drink. Onder haar oë het hy probeer om haar
vriendin Isabella te verlei; en, moedeloos, het sy die afjak wat hy
gekry het, met onverskilligheid aangesien. So moes sy stap vir stap
die agteruitgang sien, waarvan sy miskien nog die oorsaak was. Sy
kon daar nie onverskillig by bly nie, en het tog nie in staat gevoel om
’n redding te probeer wat sy reeds voor onmoontlik aangesien het
nie.
Noudat Alida haar hele miserabele bestaan so weer opgehaal het,
versadig van verdriet, verbaas dit haar dat sy daar so deur ly. Dis
haar gewoonte om met haar gedagtes alleen te wees. Sy het al
gewend geword aan die troosteloosheid daarvan. En kyk, nou het
hul bitterheid vir haar nog ’n nuwe smart. Ander droefgeestige
gedagtes kom in haar herinnering op, as om haar daarop te wys
hoeveel skuld sy self gehad het aan haar lot. Sy dink terug aan die
dag toe Paula Kibert, daar in die eikebos, haar hart laat klop het met
’n ongekende verlange. Sy sien weer die rooi sonsondergang deur
die bome, en sy voel weer die hemelse ontroering in haar boesem.
Sy sien hoe Marcel sy lang gestalte na haar oorbuig en van liefde
praat. En nou . . . . . nou sien sy hom daar lê, in ’n verre land, in die
warm son, met ’n gat in sy voorhoof, bleek en aaklig, met ’n
verwytende blik op haar. O die oë vol pyn! hoe goed weet sy nog
hoe hul lyk! So het hy haar aangekyk toe sy met haar misdadige
swye hul geluk verwoes het. En in die donker kamer probeer sy
verniet om haar gesig toe te maak en sy oë nie meer te sien nie.
Verward en bewend, rig sy smeekbede en woorde van liefde aan
die dooie:
—Marcel, vergewe my. Moenie vir my so aankyk nie! Ek het nie
geweet nie. Ek was nog maar ’n kind. Dis my verontskuldiging. Ja,
ek was lafhartig; ek was bang om stryd te voer vir jou, om my
swakheid te verdedig. Ek was bang om te wag, om lief te hê, om
moeilikheid te ly, om te lewe. Maar God het my gestraf! O, hoe
wreed is die straf! Moenie meer vir my so kyk nie; maak toe jou oë
en vergewe my! . . . .
Sy skrik vir die klank van haar eie stem en druk haar hand op haar
bors. Sy voel benoud soos op die dag toe haar kindjie gebore
geword het. Uit haar verskeurde hart verrys eindelik die beeld, die
kennis van die ware lewe, in al sy krag en grootheid. En met haar
hele bevryde siel het sy Marcel lief, soos hy haar liefgehad het—in
sy sieleadel, in sy trots. Dis deur haar dat hy—soekende om sy
smart te vergeet—deur die woestyn gegaan het en daar sy roemryke
dood gevind het. En miskien het hy nog aan haar gedink toe hy
geval het. Ja, haar grootste begeerte is nou om te weet dat sy laaste
gedagte oor haar was, al sou hy ook met minagting aan haar gedink
het. Sy vergelyk haar teenswoordige bestaan met dié wat sy
versmaad het; en dit spyt haar dat sy nie liewer die weduwee is van
’n held nie as om ’n minderwaardige lewe te deel met ’n man wat
geen liefde kan opwek of voel nie . . . .
Die deur van die kamer gaan oop, en mevrou Delourens—ongerus
dat haar dogter so lank wegbly, roep in die donker:
—Alida, is jy daar?
 —Ja, wat wil u hê?
Verbaas oor so ’n onverwagte afjak, gaan mevrou Delourens weg
en kom met lig terug. Sy vind haar dogter beweegloos en bleek, en
sien aan haar afgedroogde wange dat sy trane gestort het. Sy gaan
by haar sit en haar omarm. Maar Alida stoot haar weg. En die hart
wat net moederlik alleen is, kry ’n steek.
—My liewe kind, jy het verdriet! Wat is dit dan? Ek is tog jou
moeder. Wat makeer jy vanaand?
Ondanks haar lus om baas te speel—wat deur die teenstribbeling
nog aangewakker word—begryp sy dat sy haar kind nou nie moet
opdruk nie. Sy liefkoos en vlei haar—maar alles verniet, want as sy
weer vra:
—Wat makeer jy dan vanaand? dan antwoord Alida, met ’n ferme
stem, wat haar ma heeltemal nie van haar gewend is nie:
—Niks nie!
Die moeder wik en weeg twee vrae wat op haar tong brand.
Eindelik—nadat sy begryp het dat die dood van kommandant Kibert
wel iets met die trane te doen het, en terwyl sy nie durf om die
geheim aan te roer wat sy soos iets niksbeduidends behandel het
nie—vra sy:
—Is dit oor jou man?
—Ja, fluister Alida, weer teruggeval in haar swakheid.
Altwee stel hulle tevrede met die leuen, wat hul die pyn spaar om
die onvermydelike verwyt van die verlede te hoor. Hulle dink oor
Marcel Kibert en hulle praat oor Marthenay.
Alida kla oor haar treurige bestaan:
—Dit was verkeerd van ons om hom te vra om sy betrekking te
bedank.
—Hoe seer maak jy my, my kind! Sou jy my dan wil verlaat het?
—Is dit beter dat my man my verlaat?
 —Ek sou gesterf het, sê mevrou Delourens opgewonde. Jy sal tog
nooit begryp hoe lief ek jou het, en hoe graag ek jou gelukkig wil
maak nie!
En sy meen heeltemal wat sy sê.
Mislei deur die droewige klag van haar dogter, vind sy weer haar
sekere stelling terug, wat versteur was deur die gedagte aan die
gesneuwelde held. Afgaande op die ondervinding van haar eie
huwelikslewe, kan sy die teleurstelling van Alida haar bestaan glad
nie voel nie. Is dit dan nie die lot van die meeste vrouens nie? En het
haar dogter dan nie nog as troos, wat aan so baie ander ontbreek, ’n
toevlug aan die warme moederhart nie?
En in haar gedagte sien Alida ’n ander moeder, wat op hierdie
selfde oomblik die bittere lydensbeker leeg drink—’n arme ou vrou,
by wie sy graag sou wil wees, en waar sy sou gewees het as sy haar
bestemming gevolg het. Soos swakkelinge wat in opstand kom,
gaan sy die maat te buite, tot sy onregverdig word ten opsigte van
haar eie moeder.
Hulle kyk mekaar aan. Eindelik begryp mevrou Delourens haar
dogter, en voel ’n diepe smart. Daar is meteens ’n diepe kloof
ontstaan tussen haar en haar dogter. Altwee voel die wrede
openbaring. Hul verskillende geaardheid—die een heerssugtig en
heeltemal oorgegee aan wêreldse vooroordele: die ander tengerig,
gedwee en oorheers deur haar teerheid—die verskil val hul meteens
kragtig op.
As hul ’n oomblik daarna bedaard en gearmd in die voorkamer
kom, dan het niemand ’n gedagte aan die treurspel wat ’n skeiding
tussen hulle gemaak het nie.
Isabella is daar, sy lei die gesprek op luide toon, parmantig,
geestig, en laat haar wit tande sien. Van tyd tot tyd kyk sy almal met
haat en minagting aan—haar man, haar nalopers, Marthenay,
Lavernay, en veral Clement Delourens—omdat hul haar nie kan sê
of Jan Berlier nog leef nie.
Sy sien dat Alida gehuil het, en beny haar die opregtheid van haar
smart.
 As die oomblik van vertrek daar is, en Alida met haar na die
kleedkamer gaan om haar te help met haar jas, maak sy van die
geleentheid gebruik om haar arms om Alida haar hals te slaan en
haar eindelik oor te gee aan die ontroering wat sy al die heel aand
onderdruk het. En sy laat die volgende woorde hoor—wat Alida
dadelik begryp:
—My arme Alida! Hoe lafhartig is ons twee tog gewees! Ag!
hoekom kan ons vanaand nie openlik ons dooie beween nie. Ons
lewe het aan hulle toebehoor, en ons het geweier om hulle dit te gee.
Laat ons ons ellendige bestaan beween; alles kon vir ons helder
gewees het!
—Ja, sê Alida. Selfs die dooie te beween, is nou nog te verkies bo
ons teenwoordige bestemming . . . .
 II.
DIE BOODSKAP VAN DIE VELDWAGTER.

—Ek sal teen skemerdonker terug wees, het mevrou Kibert gesê
aan haar dogter toe sy die middag weggery het met die rytuig. Sy
het na Chamberie gegaan om famieliesake te reël in verband met
die behoud van Maupas, wat nou moontlik sal wees omdat haar
kinders in Asië—Etienne en Frans—en ook Marcel, deur sy werk in
Afrika, so veel sukses gehad het.
Die son is al onder, en Paula gaan op stoep om te hoor of die
rytuig nog nie aankom nie. Maar alles is stil. Dis skerp koud; sy gaan
haar tjalie haal, en wag.
Die landskap is met sneeu bedek, en die aandlig kleur dit met ’n
rose tint—soos ’n blos van maagdelike skroomvalligheid. Die
wingerd-ranke en heinings dra ’n fyn kantwerk van ryp, skitterend in
die laaste sonstrale. Die bosse is kaal en bêre geen geheime meer
nie, en die fyn takkies bo staan swart geteken teen die suiwere
winterlug.
Paula bewonder die towerspel van die winter. Sy beef van die kou.
Net soos sy die deur instap, vlie daar ’n kraai in die verte en laat sy
krassende stem hoor—sy vlerke soos ’n swart vlek teen die
bleekblou lug.
—Ongeluksvoël! sê Paula, maar sonder gedagte aan ’n slegte
voorteken: dis mos nou die tyd vir kraaie. Omdat daar geen kos
meer op die velde te kry is nie, soek hul dit in die nabyheid van die
huise.
Sy sit nog twee stukke hout op die kaggelvuur in die voorkamer en
sit ’n ketel water daarop. Dan gaan sy ’n glas haal, die suikerpot, ’n
lepel en ’n paar suurlemoene, en sit alles op ’n tafeltjie by die vuur,
terwyl sy in stilte dink:
—Ma sal koud wees as sy tuiskom. Dis helder weer en koud, en ’n
mens bevries amper in die ope rytuig. Die warm vuurtjie en ’n glasie
pons sal haar goed doen—arme ma!
 Sy neem ’n boek en probeer om te lees, maar dit wil nie vlot nie.
Die horlosie slaat sesuur. Ongerus gryp sy weer die tjalie van die
stoel en gaan weer op stoep staan.
Dis nou al nag. Die sterre staan bewerig aan die klare hemelruim
—net of hul koud kry. Hoewel die maan nog nie op is nie, is die
gesigseinder darem nie donker nie. Dit lyk of ’n onbestemde lig van
onder opgaan, en of die wit besneeude aarde die hemelruimte verlig.
Onder in die laagte sien Paula die liggies van Chamberie skitter.
Sy boor met haar oë tussen die eikestamme deur waar die rytuig
langs moet kom, of sy die beweënde lanterns nog nie gewaar nie.
Die minste geluidjie wat die windjie aandra, hoor sy. Nou word sy
bedroë deur die tiktak van ’n windmeul. Dan skrik sy meteens op as
sy ’n krysende geskreeu hoor, soos ’n noodroep. Maar die skrik gaan
weer weg, want sy het die fluit herken van ’n naburige fabriek. Lank
bly sy so staan, leunende op die tralie oplettend en onrustig.
Marie, die ou vrou wat hulle deur goeie en kwaaie dae gedien het
kom haar soek en beknor haar:
—Maar is dit nou nie dwaas nie, juffrou, om in so ’n koue buite te
bly nie! Kom nou binne; u sal mevrou tog nie gouer laat kom nie.
Paula gehoorsaam sonder antwoord te gee. Sy gaan in die
voorkamer om die vuur op te stook. Haar gewone moed het haar
verlaat. Haar hart klop hard in haar bors. Sy probeer om haarself
gerus te stel—maar dit gaan nie.
—Die ou perd draf maar stadig, sê sy. Die notarisse hou ’n mens
altyd langer besig as jy gedink het.
Sy hou nou op om te probeer die ongerustheid te oorwin, wat elke
minuut groter word. Selfs in die gebed vind sy geen kalmering. Daar
hoor sy die voordeur oopgaan.
—Het ma gekom? vra sy, opspringend, aan ou Marie wat by die
deur verbykom.
—Nee, juffrou, dis ’n man wat vra of hy die ou mevrou kan spreek.
En?
 —Hy sê hy is die veldwagter en word gestuur deur die
burgemeester.
—Die veldwagter? En wat wil hy hê?
Sy word nog meer ongerus en sê dat hy binnegelaat moet word.
Maar sy bedwing haar en ontvang die boodskapper van die
burgemeester skynbaar met die grootste kalmte.
Stug swyend en onverskillig, soos mense wat heeldag besig is
met een soort harde werk, voel die man tog dat hy ’n belangrike
sending te volbring het, nou hy so voor Paula staan. Op pad het hy
daar nooit aan gedink nie.
Paula sê aan hom:
—My moeder is uit. Maar kan ek die boodskap aanneem?
Hy praat nie, hy voel ongemaklik, en sy swye vermeerder Paula se
innerlike angs. Dan stamel hy:
—Juffrou, ek moet . . . . ek moet u vertel . . . .
Die lamplig val op sy gesig, sy sien die verleentheid en
beteuterdheid daarop en gee haar oor aan haar donkerste
voorgevoelens. Haastig pratend skud sy die man nou wakker uit sy
verdowing:
—Maar praat, praat dan tog! Het daar ’n ongeluk gebeur? My
moeder . . . . . op die pad . . . .
Sy kan nie verder nie.
—Nee, sê die man. Ek het mevrou nie ontmoet nie.
Dan bly hy weer stil.
—Maar waarvoor het jy dan gekom? As jy iets te sê het, sê dit
dan, en maak gou!
Regop en fier, neem sy die toon van gesag aan, wat sy somtyds
laat geld—net soos Marcel. Dié houding bring die boodskapper
heeltemal van sy stukke af. Met stomheid geslae, haal hy die
telegram uit sy sak en gee dit met sy groot, bewende hand aan die
meisie, dan wil hy weggaan. Paula het die rooi papiertjie in haar
hand. Voor sy dit nog oopvou dink sy al aan haar broer. In ’n
sekonde is haar oog daarop. Ag! is al wat sy sê. Sy verfrommel die
papier in haar hand en word doodsbleek. Maar sy span al haar
kragte in en bly regop staan, en stort geen traan nie. Aan hierdie
man, wat sy vir ongevoelig aansien, wil sy haar swakheid nie toon
nie. Maar sy moet vashou aan die tafel. Dié beweging en haar
bleekheid is al wat verraai wat sy voel.
’n Verskriklike stilte lê op albei.
Eindelik sê sy sonder enige beweging:
—Dis goed. Gaan nou maar weg. Dankie.
As hy omdraai om uit te gaan dink sy nog aan die wet van
landelike gasvryheid en sê:
—Vra aan Marie om jou iets te drinke te gee.
Maar die man hardloop die kombuis deur en vlug asof ’n
moordenaar agter hom aan is . . . . . .
—God! Is dit waar? sug Paula, nou sy alleen is. Sy wankel na die
skoorsteenmantel, hou met twee hande daaraan vas om te bly
staan, maar sak neer op ’n stoel. Sy beef oor haar hele lyf. Sy stryk
haar hand oor haar oë, wat geen traan stort nie en verdwaald
rondkyk, asof sy die verskriklike toneel wil uitsluit wat haar
voorstaan. Daar voor haar, op die kamertapyt, sien sy haar broer lê,
met ’n gat in sy voorhoof, waaruit sy edel bloed, sy lewe, wegvloei. O
die ernstige gelaat, droefgeestig maar fier, welbewus van sy lot, soos
sy dit altyd gesien het na die weiering van Alida; en nou sien sy dit
weer, maar die oë is nou onsiende, roerloos, starend—skoon is die
gelaat, en kalm in die dood!
Saggies roep sy: Marcel! Marcel! en verberg haar gesig in haar
hande. Maar daar kom geen trane om haar smart te verlig nie. Haar
broer, vir wie sy soveel verering gehad het, op wie sy so trots was, is
dood, dood! Tien-, twintigmaal herhaal sy die woord om al die
vreeslikheid daarvan te deurgrond. Dood, die held van die skone
oorwinninge! Op twee-en-dertigjarige leeftyd is die heldhaftige en
selfopofferende jong lewe afgesny. O, hoe min was hy aan die lewe
geheg! Al lank het hy daar met geringagting op neergesien; was die
ontmoeting met ’n banghartige meisie nie genoeg om hom alle
lewenslus te ontroof nie? En onwillekeurig roep Paula al die
herinneringe terug wat vir haar voortekens was van sy naderende
dood: Dit was daardie glimlag vol vertroue wat sy die aand op sy
lippe gesien het toe hy haar sy hartsgeheim geopenbaar het. Dit was
dié onverskillige handbeweging wat hy gemaak het toe hul die
sombere waarskuwing van die uile gehoor het ná sy laaste
onderhoud met Alida. Dit was ook—toe hul die dag van sy vertrek
daar op die boomstam in die bos gesit het—die sagte, wonderlike
afgetrokkenheid wat hy laat blyk het toe hy gepraat het van sy
toekoms. Jare al, van dié aand dat hy Alida die laaste gesien het,
dra hy die dood in hom om. Nooit het hy weer haar naam genoem
nie. Nooit het hy weer gesinspeel op sy liefde vir haar nie. Maar hy
het alle geloof in die lewe verloor . . . . . . En op die geliefde gelaat,
wat sy in haar verbeelding met innige deelneming aanskou, ontdek
Paula ’n diep-tevrede rustigheid, onversteurbaar, altyddurend. En
meteens gee sy ’n luide skree, val knielend neer en ween.
—Ja, dink sy, jy rus in vrede. Ons liefde was vir jou nie genoeg
nie. En ons het jou tog so liefgehad, Marcel. Jy het nooit geweet hoe
lief ek jou gehad het nie. Ek was nie in staat om jou dit te sê nie,
maar mijn hart was vol van jou. Waarom het die dood my nie
weggeneem in plaas van jou nie? Ek is tog onnuttig!
Daar’s ’n ander onrus nog, waaraan sy maar liewer nie nou wil
dink nie, maar dit voleindig die verwarring van haar gees: Marcel het
’n maat by hom gehad, in die slag . . . .
Meteens spring sy op:
—As ma nou kom!
Sy het haar vergeet. En terwyl sy God dank dat sy aan haar ma
die allerdroewigste nuus kan meedeel, ween sy nou, nie vir hom wat
daar vir altyd in slaap geval het op die veld van eer en oorwinning
nie, maar vir haar wat daar bedaard aangestap kom, terug uit die
donker daarbuite, sonder argwaan, na die rand van die afgrond. Sal
hierdie laaste slag nie genoeg wees om die ou, swaar-beproefde
lewe heeltemal af te breek nie? Tevergeefs soek Paula na ’n
ligplekkie. Om haar heers ’n kerkhofrou. Ag, al die sterfgevalle en
skeidinge: haar suster Thérèse, dood op twaalfjarige leeftyd; haar
vader in sy volle krag afgeknak; haar suster Margriet ’n sendelinge;
Etienne en Frans in die kolonies. Sy is nog net hier, heeltemal
alleen, om haar ma te help om die alte sware kruis te dra. Maar nou
dit nie anders kan nie, sal sy dapper wees en die wankelende
ouderdom met haar krag ondersteun.
Sy droog haar trane af en was haar gesig.
—Ek sal haar nog nie nou, nog nie dadelik, vertel nie, sê sy. Sy
moet tyd hê om warm te word en te rus. Ek sal haar vanaand vertel
dat Marcel siek is. Verlede nag het sy niks geslaap nie. Vannag moet
sy ten minste nog slaap. Môre word haar hart verbrysel. By dag is dit
gemakliker om pyn te ly as in die nare, graf-donkere nag. Vanaand
bly ek nog stil. . . . .
Sy spaar haar moeder die bittere lydensbeker. Uit die verre land,
waar sy siel nou in vrede rus, roep haar groot broer haar toe: Spaar
haar vanaand! Sy het tog al so swaar gely!
Daar hoor sy voetstappe. Haastig verberg sy die noodlottige
telegram.
Marie, die ou bediende, kom binne:
—Daar is mevrou. Ek hoor die rytuig aankom.
 III.
HAAR LAASTE KIND.

—Goeienaand, ma.
Mevrou Kibert kom binne, ’n bietjie vooroor gebuie, toegedraai in
’n ou mantel waarvan die harebekleding verslete is. Die
laaghangende kap oor die lamp verhinder haar om die bleekheid van
haar dogter op te merk terwyl sy haar soen. Sy gaan na die vuur toe.
—O, hoe heerlik om tuis te kom! En ’n mens hou tog maar van so
’n ou tuis waar ons die lewe geken het . . . . en die dood! Weet jy
nog, Paula, hoe bedroef ons was toe dit gelyk het of ons Maupas
sou moet verlaat?
Sy verwarm haar verrimpelde hande by haar huislike vuurtjie.
Paula nader haar van agter en haal haar hoedjie af.
—Hou u mantel nog maar ’n bietjie om, ma; u het seker baie koud
gehad.
Mevrou Kibert draai haar hoof om en kyk haar dogter aan. Sy
glimlag haar teen. En die glimlag, onder haar grys hare, op haar nog
frisse wange, in haar vertroulike, rein, blou oë, is lieflik, soos die
najaarsrose wat nog aanhou bloei, selfs in die sneeu.
—My liewe kind, as ek jou aankyk, dan maak dit my nog warmer
as die vuurtjie wat jy vir my aangemaak het.
Paula staan op haar knieë en vat die ketel aan:
—Ma gaan nou ’n lekker warm pons drink.
Haar ma sien nou meteens dat sy so wit is as was:
—Maar dis jy wat versorg moet word, my kind! Jy is heeltemal
bleek en siek, en jy sê my niks daarvan nie. En die ou vrou staan
dadelik op van haar stoel.
—Ag, dis niks nie, ma. Moenie ongerus wees nie. Ek het miskien
kou gevat buite op stoep. Ek sal na die ete dadelik gaan slaap.
 En om die besorgdheid van die moeder tot bedaring te bring, het
sy die moed om daar nog laggend by te voeg:
—Ek verseker u, ma, dis glad niks nie.
Sy dink daaraan dat die hanglamp in die eetkamer haar gesig te
veel sal verlig—daarom sê sy:
—Laat ons hier eet, ma, voor die vuur: dis beter.
—Maar die tafel is binne al gedek.
—O, dis gou te verhelp, ma sal sien.
—Nou toe dan maar, my kind. Jy is self yskoud. En in die oop
rytuig het ek dit ook maar goed gevoel.
Paula het alles reggemaak, en hulle sit aan.
—Jy het niks geëet nie, my kind. Jy is siek. Toe, gaan slaap nou.
Ek sal jou bed vir jou verwarm en ’n bietjie tee vir jou maak. Nou sal
ek jou weer versorg.
—Nee, regtig, ma, ek het niks nodig nie. Marie sal my ’n kruik
warm water gee. En nou moet ma ook maar gaan slaap. Nag, ma.
My liewe ou mampie!
Hartstogtelik omhels sy haar moeder en verdwyn dan in haar
kamer. Sy kan nie meer nie. Sy pluk haar klere van haar lyf af, maak
met een handbeweging haar lang hare los, blaas haar kers uit, en—
toegerol in haar kombers—gee sy haar heeltemal oor aan haar
heftige droefheid, wat sy te lank onderdruk het. Agtereenvolgens
voel sy, daar in die donker, wat neerslagtigheid is, opstand teen die
noodlot, en, eindelik, grenslose medelye met al wat mens is.
Sy beween haar broer, haar moeder, haarself. Na die kant van die
muur gedraai, begrawe in haar ellende, haar gesig in haar sakdoek,
vergeet sy die verbygaande tyd en hoor nie hoe haar ma ook na bed
gaan nie.
Mevrou Kibert se kamer is naasaan. Sy maak saggies die
tussendeur oop, om haar dogter nie wakker te maak nie, en om in
die nag te kan hoor as sy iets nodig mog hê. Dan, soos elke aand
voordat sy haar uitklee, kniel sy voor haar bed, en bid. Soos elke
aand, versamel sy in haar gebed haar geliefde dode en lewende—
oor die hele wêreld verstrooi—om hulle aan te beveel in die
beskerming van die Heer; en sy herdink in haar gebed veral die
onsekere bestemming van Paula en die gemartelde siel van Marcel.
Haar hardhorigheid en haar toewyding sonder haar heeltemal af
van alles. Maar nou sy in haar bed is, verbeel sy haar dat sy ’n snik
gehoor het. Sy luister, maar stel haar weer gerus.
—Paula slaap, dink sy. Sy was bleek vanaand. Die arme kind.
God behoede haar en make haar gelukkig! . . . . Ou Marie moet
seker ook kou gevat het. Haar oë was rooi, en haar hande het
gebewe.
Meteens gaan sy orent sit. Nee, nou het sy dit alte goed gehoor:
die half-versmoorde snik kom van Paula haar bed. Sy skerp nou
haar oor en hoor dat Paula wanhopend ween.
Geweldig verskrik, klim sy uit haar bed. Sy voel somaar meteens
dat daar niks aan Paula haar gesondheid makeer nie. Sy dink ook
nou daaraan hoe sy die hele aand al ’n treurige stemming in die huis
gevoel het. Die ongeluk is haar vooruitgeloop na Maupas en is voor
haar die huis ingegaan—’n ongeluk waar almal van weet, net sy nie,
en wat wèl erg moet wees omdat dit voor haar weggesteek word. Sy
het ’n voorgevoel van die sombere en gehate teenwoordigheid van
haar ou kennis, die dood: Wie het hy weer geraak? Watter slagoffer
het hy haar nou weer ontneem? . . . .
En terwyl sy tastende en blootsvoets in die donker aanstap, tel sy
almal wat afwesig is, Magriet, Etienne, Frans, Marcel . . . . ja, dis
Marcel!
Sy voel die geopende deur, sy raak aan Paula haar bed, en oor
Paula gebuie, sê sy:
—Paula, sê my wat jy makeer!
Meer durf sy nie te sê nie.
Die meisie, meteens in haar smart verras, laat ’n skreeu hoor van
angs en jammer, wat haar hele geheim verraai:
—O my arme ma!
 —Marcel—is dit nie so nie? sê mevrou Kibert asemloos. Daar’s
slegte nuus van Marcel.
—My ma, my ma! sug Paula.
—Is hy siek, baie siek?
—Ja, ma, hy is siek!
En Paula, half orent, slaan haar arms om die hals van haar ma.
Saggies, maar ferm, stoot haar ma haar weg:
—Hy is dood?!
—O! laat ons tog wag tot môre, ma; dan sal ons tyding kry. Wees
sterk, ma; ons weet nog nie.
—Jy het iets gekry, ’n brief of ’n telegram. Wys dit vir my. Ek wil dit
sien!
—Maar, ma, bedaar tog! smeek Paula, met ’n gebroke stem waar
die hele waarheid in lê.
—Hy is dood! hy is dood! herhaal mevrou Kibert.
Sittende op die rand van die bed, yskoud, voel sy haar hart
opegaan en alle lewensmoed daaruit wegstroom. Tevergeefs wend
sy haar tot die Heer, haar eerste toevlug in die ure van rou. Sonder
trane, en verskrikliker as wanneer sy sou gehuil het, kla sy met luide
stem:
—Ag! hierdie keer is dit te veel! Ek kan nie. Nee, daarby kan ek
my nie neerlê nie. Altyd het ek my aan U wet onderwerp, my God!
Met ’n verbryselde hart het ek U naam nog geprys. Maar nou het ek
nie meer krag nie. Ek is ’n arme ou vrou, afgeleef en baie swak, en
ek het al meer gely as wat nodig was om my te beproef. Ek kan nie
meer nie, ek kan nie meer nie! Marcel, my Marcel!
—My ma! my ma! sê Paula weer, en druk haar vas in haar arms.
Sy voel die koue rillings loop oor die lyf van haar ma, wat
onbeweeglik bly in die donker, soos ’n boom in die nag deur die blits
getref. Meteens spring sy op, stryk ’n vuurhoutjie aan, en met haar
arms om haar weeklaende ou moeder, lei sy haar terug na haar
kamer. Sy wil haar in haar bed help. Maar mevrou Kibert—tot dusver
volgsaam en gedwee—stribbel nou teë:
—Nee, staande wil ek ly!
Paula kleed haar ma eers haastig aan voordat sy haarself
aankleed. Dan bring sy haar na die voorkamer, waar sy die byna
dooie kole weer aanblaas. Sy maak ’n groot vuur en sit weer ’n ketel
water daarop. Stil en terneergesla loop sy heen en weer in die
kamer, in ’n wit kamerrok, bleek onder haar lang swart hare, wat in
oorvloed neerhang op haar skouers—sy lyk soos ’n engel van smart
en vertroosting.
Sy het haar ma by die vuur gesit, in ’n groot stoel, met ’n kombers
oor haar knieë.
Gewond in die heiligdom van haar moederlike bestaan, bly die ou
vrou verdoof en roerloos sit, sonder ’n lid te beweeg, sonder ’n traan,
in ’n toestand van terneergeslaendheid, erger as die wanhoop self.
Sy kla nie meer nie, sy bid nie meer nie, sy kyk net reguit sonder iets
te sien, en sy swyg. Deur die noodlot oorstelp, lyk sy nou
onverskillig. Sy voel haar gemartelde hart nie meer in haar bors nie.
Sy laat haar meegaan met die ontsaglike stroom van haar ongeluk,
soos ’n drenkeling hom oorgee aan die bodemlose oseaan.
Geduldig wag Paula af tot die trane die aaklige stilte kom
verbreek, soos ’n watervloed meteens ’n dam deurbreek wat hom
stuit. Maar haar ma bly nog maar roerloos en stil. Sy wil haar iets
laat drink. Sy gaan op haar knieë staan, neem haar hande en roep
haar aan:
—Ma, ma! praat van Marcel. Praat tog, ma!
Daar is geen antwoord nie. Nou begin sy bang te word. Dis of sy
met die dood alleen is. Buite haarself snik sy:
—Ma! is ek dan nie ma haar kind nie, ma haar laaste kind, haar
Paula nie?
Dit lyk of mevrou Kibert uit ’n bedwelming ontwaak. Sy kyk na die
gesig vol verdriet wat haar so angstig aanstaar. ’n Lang rilling skud
haar hele lyf deurmekaar. Oorwin, strek sy haar arms uit na haar
kind, en aan haar bors geleun, ween sy. Dis nou sy wat, in haar
swakheid, om hulp smeek.
Lank bly die twee so sit, mengende hul trane en hul ellende, en
ondervindende die soete smart van ’n gesamentlike lye in liefde.
As die moeder haar woorde weer kan vind, dan gebruik sy dit om
die Heer te dank:
—Paula, my hart, wat het ek netnou gesê? Nee, God is goed: Hy
kan my nog meer kasty. In my ellende skenk Hy my ’n engel tot hulp,
en die engel is jy. En ek weier om gebroke te wees! O my God, U wil
is wreed, maar geprese sy U naam!
Nou sy weer ’n bietjie moed het, vra sy om die noodlottige
telegram te sien. Herhaaldelik moet sy haar kragte bymekaarmaak
om dit te kan lees, en wenend sê sy aan Paula:
—Hy is geval soos ’n held . . . . Hy herleef nou in die bysyn van sy
God.
—Ja, sê Paula, as oorwinnaar is hy gestorwe, in sy voorhoof
getref.
Altwee bly stil. Altwee sien die skone voorhoof van Marcel, met
bloed bevlek, die hoë voorhoof wat so ’n fiere gees gebêre het.
Mevrou Kibert kry jammer vir Paula:
—Gaan slaap nou. Môre sal jy al jou kragte nodig hê om jou ou
moeder by te staan.
—Nee, ek laat ma nie alleen nie, sê Paula.
—Kom, laat ons dan same bid.
Naas mekaar kniel moeder en dogter. Lank duur die gebed van
die ou moeder. Paula is uitgeput en gaan sit naas haar. Maar
mevrou Kibert hou aan, ondersteun deur ’n bowemenslike krag; oor
haar wange rol die trane, wat sy nie meer afdroog nie. Sy smeek.
 Naas mekaar kniel moeder en dogter. Lank duur die gebed van
die ou moeder.

—Liewe Heer, neem aan die offer van ons droefheid en ellende.
Toe U aan die kruis gestorwe het, was U moeder ten minste by U.
Maar ek was nie by my seun nie. Skenk my moed om die
beproewing te dra. Nie vir my nie, my God, maar vir die taak wat ek
nog te vervul het, vir my kinders, vir hierdie een wat U nie gespaar
het nie. Sy is nog baie jonk om soveel te dra. Ek het al gewend
geword aan pyn en ellende: maar sy—beskerm haar, wees genadig .
...
 Sy keer haar om na Paula en sien dat sy met haar bleek gelaat
agteroor lê in die groot stoel. Ondanks haar moed is die jongmeisie
in haar trane in slaap geval, haar geswelde ooglede is nog vogtig.
Mevrou Kibert staan op, gaan naas haar sit, en medelydend neem
sy die hoof van Paula op haar skoot. Haar mooi swart hare val om
haar gelaat en verhoog nog die bleekheid daarvan. So lê die
doodvermoeide kind aan slaap, bewaak deur haar moeder.
Haar moeder kyk in haar gesig, op die onbeweeglike, jong
gelaatstrekke. En sy sien ook hoe haar seun lê, daar vèr op die
woestynsand, ’n gat in sy voorhoof; soos hy daar uitgestrek lê, groter
nog as toe hy fier orent in lewe rondgewandel het. Saggies spreek
sy hom aan:
—O my kind! my liewe kind! nou weet jy wat die ewige rus en
vrede is. Jy is ’n goeie seun vir ons gewees en ’n dapper man. Niks
as wat groot is, het jou hart geroer nie. Jy kan ons sien, nie waar
nie? Jy sien hoe ons ween en hoe ons harte verbrysel is. Waak oor
ons uit die Hemel, oor Paula. Ek is reeds op pad na my graf, na jou,
na jou vader. Die aarde trek my aan. Ek voel dit, en jy roep my. Gou-
gou sal ek vir altyd by jou wees . . . . My God, wie sal my oë toedruk
op my doodsbed as U my al my kinders ontneem?
En met haar arms om Paula, druk sy haar vol liefde teen haar aan
en begin weer te bid, smekende aan die noodlot om tog haar laaste
kind vir haar te spaar . . . .
Die môreskemer verlig die treurende tweetal. Dit word dag—so ’n
wintermôre wat ’n koue lig-rilling oor die sneeu laat dwaal. Die ou
vrou bid nog aaneen. Uit God put sy haar onoorwinlike krag. As
uitverkorene van die smart, moet sy tot selfs die besinksel van die
bittere lydensbeker uitdrink.
Paula word wakker en sien hoe haar ma, bleek en yskoud, haar
flou toelag. Sy sê tevergeefs aan haar dat sy rus moet neem en
moet eet.
Geboë, en meer dan tien jaar verouderd, gaan mevrou Kibert aan
haar skryftafeltjie sit en begin met vaste hand te skrywe aan haar
afwesige dogter en seuns, sodat almal kan deel in hul
gemeenskaplike beproewing . . . .